Pain, chronic pain relief, sheffield, U284

Deep relief
Hypnotherapy can help at a deep level with pain, in the following ways:
1) directly reducing levels of pain
2) altering your perception of pain
3) improving your mind's response to pain
4) dealing with trauma that may have initiated the pain response
5) reducing physical tension
6) helping you cope with pain

What is pain?
Doctors discovered during the world wars that uninjured people could
be in great pain e.g., if they thought the blood they could see was their
own. Likewise, injured soldiers were equally capable of being in no
pain, despite huge injury, if their minds were intent on a task e.g., getting
to greater safety or rescuing someone.

Switching off pain
Do you think you'd notice a cut on your leg if you were in the process of
saving a child's life e.g., from falling over a cliff? Yet this same cut
would be very painful if you were just sat at home doing nothing. Pain,
it turns out, is subjective, and we are quite capable of switching
it off! Its just not usually under our direct control.

One definition is:
"Pain is the mind's emotional response to warn of tissue damage."
Born in the mind, it follows that pain has the potential to be completely
switched off by the mind too. This is exactly what happens when people commonly
undergo anaesthetic-free operations using only hypnosis for pain relief.

Chronic PainHypnotherapy can also help with chronic pain. After all why does
your mind give out the same warning over and over again? If you got the
message the first time it might feel a bit pointless 10 years later when
it's still relentlessly saying the same old warning! These responses can
even persist long after the initiating condition has cleared up. The mind
gets 'caught in a loop'.

Hypnotherapy changes these conditioned emotional responses by accessing
the subconscious, where conditioned responses are stored.

Consult your GP first*Pain is a vital response to let us know that something
is wrong. In all cases the client must have consulted their GP first.
Only in very rare cases will pain be completely removed. More usually
it will be reduced and/or transformed. Once you have seen your GP we
can work on a solution based upon what is known about your pain.

*Required disclaimer: Results,
symptoms and treatment may vary from person to person, all individual
cases are taken on merit.

Treating pain with hypnotherapy, depending on the nature of the pain,
may involve:

- Visualisations and progressive relaxation in hypnosis
(removing tension, especially in and around the affected areas is the
first and easiest step towards relief)

- Directly reducing your pain* (with hypnotic suggestion
your sensations of pain can come more under your control such that it
can be largely reduced)

- Changing your emotional response to pain (pain is
an emotional response designed to ensure you take serious and immediate
action. As such there is often a hidden element of fear associated with
pain which makes the sensation much worse. With hypnotic suggestion
the subconscious can be encouraged to let go of this fear element. Other
emotional associations with your pain can also be removed such as anger,
depression, guilt etc, all of which lightens your load.)

- Dealing with the trauma that initiated the pain.
(in cases of serious injury the event that initiated the pain may have
been traumatic and could benefit from reprocessing. By revisiting this
event in the comfort and safety of hypnosis the emotional element can
be reduced and hence the pain too. This approach can also cure cases
of 'mystery pain' when these are the expression of a long forgotten
trauma or even a current subconscious conflict, stress etc,.)

- Boosting self-esteem and motivation with hypnotic suggestion
and NLP (NLP anchoring can allow you to summon up your best,
as and when it's needed, and hypnotic suggestions can help you feel
better about yourself and what you are dealing with... all of which
can help you cope long term)

- Timeframe:
This varies greatly depending on each individual's pain, condition and
situation.